They Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead.

Today the 9th and final Harry Potter movie opens in theaters nationwide. Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II is supposed to close the book, as it were, on the adventures of Harry and the other characters in the highly successful series. The film should do well at the box office, but just how good will this final sequel be?

Seldom are movie sequels as good as the original film. Most film critics agree that The Godfather Part II is the only sequel to be even better than the very highly acclaimed original film. Many sequels turn out to be just horrible, which brings to mind the topic, “The Producers Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead.”

10. Jaws: The Revenge (1987) – After a Great White eats his plane, Michael Caine gets out of the water in a wet shirt. In the next shot, it’s bone dry. It’s this kind of attention to detail that makes the 4th Jaws flick “riper than a bucket of chum.”

9. Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) – It’s amazing that people joke about Keanu Reeves being dumb, when he had the smarts to stay away from this. Sandra Bullock, however, is back as Annie who is now dating SWAT dude Jason Patrick.

8. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) – None of the Camp Crystal Lake killathons are what you’d call good, but this one’s unwatchable. Even the ways Jason dispatches his victims aren’t very creative, unless you consider using a speargun creative…and they used that in part III.

7. The Fly II (1989) – You may recall that at the end of the 1986 original, Geena Davis is knocked up with Jeff Goldblum’s part-fly spawn. Here, mom dies after delivering the gooey larva that grows up to become….Eric Stoltz.

6. Weekend At Bernie’s II (1993) – Notice how they tried to class this one up by using Roman numerals instead of calling it Weekend at Bernie’s 2? That’s where the sophistication ends in this low-rent comedy about two schmucks (Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy) in the Virgin Islands with their dead boss. “GE doesn’t make bulbs as dim as these guys.”

5. Batman and Robin (1997) – This makes George Clooney’s work in the Return of the Killer Tomatoes look like Olivier. But the real sin is the screenplay, which hands the cast such hardee-har lines as Schwartznegger’s Mr. Freeze line “The Iceman cometh!”

4. Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) – Where to begin? How about the fact that it’s called Blues Brothers 2000 and it came out in 1998? Or the fact that a voodoo queen turns Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman into zombies?

3. Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha’ Hood (2003) – This 6th chapter has America’s favorite troll smoking weed and hunting the homeboys who stole his pot o’ gold. If a movie could spark a race riot, this is it.

2. Caddyshack II (1988) – Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight aren’t in it and Chevy Chase barely makes a cameo. Instead, how about a heapin’ helpin’ of Jackie Mason doing Catskill jokes that weren’t funny the first time around?

1. Staying Alive (1983) – This sequel to the box office hit Saturday Night Fever is the single most disappointing movie sequel ever made. Tarted up in a Tarzan loin cloth, John Travolta shakes his moneymaker to Frank Stallone music. The film is directed by his brother, Sylvester Stallone, finally answering the question, How much is too much Stallone?